Does Google Really Need Facebook for Android to Succeed?

March 6, 2013 - Written By Alexander Maxham

How many of you still use Facebook? I know I don’t. For the most part I use Google+ because it fixes all of Facebook’s problems. It’s also so well integrated into Android. Now back when Gingerbread was the OS everyone wanted, Facebook began to see a problem. This problem was big, something that could kill the app on Facebook users’ Android-powered phones.

The problem was that Facebook was using to many method records. These are the technical bits that let a service communicate with the app installed on your phone. It was using over 3 million method records, which is now the cap for an individual app. This was Facebook’s big mobile fail. Then 2 days later Facebook’s engineering lead Mike Shaver said “we went from DEFCON 1 – klaxons and sirens, people can no longer use Facebook on Android – to the ability to extend the platform.”

Shaver told a group of reporters that it was thanks to the open source community that got Facebook for Android back on top. They were able to quickly create a patch, moved a pointer in Dalvik, and created more space for an app to store method records. “We were able to send the patch over to Google to get their opinion on it,” said Shaver. “The looked at it for a day or two, and they said it would work for now, if not for the future.”

Since the G1 or even the OG Droid, Android has come quite a ways. Especially if you compare Android 2.x to 4.x. But according to Venture Beat, they feel that without the technical ability to support massive third-party applications like Facebook, the OS will not stand. Which is why Google needs Facebook. Sure Google already has Google+ which is still relatively new but growing. But with there being so many people still using Facebook, that is the only application that can perform a true stress-test on the OS.

According to Shaver:

“We’re a very significant app to them, and they’re a very significant platform to us”

So many of us may feel that we don’t need Facebook for Android (including me) but we kinda do. But you can still find us over on Google+ all the time. How many of you use the Facebook for Android app? How bad is it? I haven’t actually used it in quite a while. Let us know in the comments.